Ultraviolet (TV series, 1998)

Ultraviolet is a six-part 1998 British TV mini-series made for Channel Four. It’s a vampire series in which the word vampire is never uttered.

The word is never used because this is the 1990s. No-one believes in vampires. Even the vampire hunters are not comfortable with the word.

This series invents a whole vampire mythos and it’s an interesting one. It’s a science fictional vampire mythos.

We find out quite a bit about the vampires in the first, Habeas Corpus, but you’ll get more out of this series if you find these things out gradually as Mike learns them.

Mike Colefield (Jack Davenport) is a cop. His buddy Jack is getting married. The night before the wedding Mike gets a phone call from Pollard, one of Jack’s informants. Pollard is unreliable at the best of times but he sounds genuine scared and Mike agrees to meet with him.

Pollard ends up dead. Mike pursues the killer but loses him. This is where it gets weird. The murder and the pursuit took place in an area where there are lots of security cameras. But the killer does not show up in any of the video footage. 

Equally odd is that Pollard had in his possession photos which he believed were vital evidence but there’s nobody in the photos.

Vaughan Rice (Idris Elba) and Angela Marsh (Susannah Harker) take charge of the investigation. Nobody knows who they are but they are assumed to be CIB (Complaints Investigation Branch, the equivalent of Internal Affairs). Everybody is intimidated by them. They are rumoured to have a lot of clout. But they’re not CIB. So who are they?

And then Mike sees half a dozen heavily armed SWAT team type guys take out a suspect. Mike is on the scene but lying low. He does find one of the guns used by the SWAT guys. The ammunition is very strange.

Vaughan Rice and Angela Marsh are not cops and they’re not Special Branch or MI5. They’re concerned with more important things. They’re in a war that goes back centuries. It is not a normal war. Mike is recruited by the shadowy organisation for which they work. It has to remain the shadows. There are some things the public is better off not knowing. There are things Mike would have been happier not knowing.

This series looks like a grungy gritty British version of The X-Files and it was doubtless influenced to some extent by the way The X-Files took a familiar subject (an alien invasion of which we are unaware) and added a huge helping of classic 70s paranoia. Ultraviolet does something similar with vampires. There’s a lot of that style of paranoia.

And in Ultraviolet there’s a huge amount of medical paranoia. These vampires spend a lot of money on medical research. This was 1998 when AIDS was a big thing but Ultraviolet is not crude enough to use vampirism as a straightforward simplistic metaphor for AIDS. There is however an obsession with contagion.

What makes Ultraviolet really fascinating is that while superficially it is science fiction we can’t be sure that there’s isn’t something stranger going on, something possibly supernatural. If a scientific explanation is being offered for vampires then you don’t expect the vampires to be bothered by things like crucifixes or Bibles. These vampires are bothered by such things but we’re not sure exactly why this is.

The vampire hunters rely on science and technology but the battle they are fighting does have some a spiritual dimension of a sort. There is an acceptance of the existence of evil but also an acceptance that evil isn’t always clearcut.

The second episode, In Nomine Patris, deals with a banker. A philanthropic banker. If you can call it philanthropy.

The third episode, Sub Judice, involves a female lawyer and a pregnancy but is it in any sense a normal pregnancy?

Mea Culpa begins with a priest killed by a schoolboy. It goes perilously close to veering into obvious predictable territory but somehow it manages to avoid these pitfalls.

Terra Incognita is another episode obsessed with the attempt to understand vampirism in medical terms and both humans and vampires are working towards this end, for their own very different purposes. Some emotional dramas are also coming to a head.

There are so many ways this series could have been messed and by the time we get to the final episode, Persona Non Grata, a number of elements have been introduced that seem to make it certain that the series will crash and burn at the end. Surprisingly this does not happen. The ending feels right and is totally satisfying.

All four key cast members are excellent.

The vampire hunter team (which seems to have government backing although the government would never admit to its existence) comprises four members and for the purposes of television drama they are perfectly balanced.

All four team members see vampire hunting very differently. Dr Angela Marsh mostly handles the medical and scientific side of things. She sees vampires as a scientific problem but it’s also an emotionally charged personal issue for her. The vampires killed her husband and one of her two children. She is constantly having to keep her intellectual and emotional sides in balance.

Vaughan Rice is a tough ex-military guy who provides the muscle. He sees vampires as a military problem. You find the enemy and you take him out.

Mike Colefield is a cop and he was recruited because they need someone who understands investigate procedures and surveillance. For Mike it’s a matter of following established investigative methods.

And then there’s Pearse Harman (Philip Quast), a Catholic priest and the man in charge. He keeps the troops inspired and focused. For him this is a complicated spiritual and moral problem. I like the way the series resists the temptation to portray the Catholic Church as the bad guys.

All four team members also have personal stakes (if you’ll for give the pun) in the fight against vampires. That’s necessary because vampire hunting requires absolute dedication.

Ultraviolet now seems to be an all but forgotten series. Perhaps it was thought of as too unconventional although it’s no more unconventional than series like The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer which were major hits at the time. Perhaps the lack of lighter comedic moments counted against it. Or perhaps it was too sufficiently action-oriented. It relies much more on suspense than action.

It’s visually impressive in a moody slightly noir-esque way.

Ultraviolet was one of the last truly interesting truly satisfying British television series and it deserves rediscovery. It’s spooky disturbing and provocative and it’s very highly recommended.

The old DVD release from Medium Rare is still in print and it’s quite inexpensive and it looks fine. This series really does need a Blu-Ray release.

The Power Game, season 1 (1965)

The Power Game was the follow-up series to ATV’s very successful The Plane Makers (1963-65). The Plane Makers details the earlier career of rising tycoon Sir John Wilder in the British aircraft industry. The Power Game, which ran for three seasons from 1965 to 1969, charts his continued rise to power. The new series features several key characters from The Plane Makers and introduces important new characters.

These two series are among the greatest achievements of 1960 British television.

The Power Game begins after Wilder’s departure from the Scott-Furlong aircraft company. He has now set his sights on a major construction company, Blighs. There is already a power struggle within the company between the founder, Caswell Bligh (Clifford Evans) and his son Kenneth Bligh (Peter Barkworth). Wilder intends to take advantage of this to gain eventual full control.

Wilder doesn’t care about the construction industry. It’s just a means to an end.

He expects Caswell Bligh to be a tough opponent but he discovers that Kenneth Bligh is a quick learner and potentially rather formidable as well.

That just adds spice to the game. This series is indeed about power as a game. It’s a game played by industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats and trade-unionists all of whom treat power as an end in itself. And they enjoy the game for its own sake. They don’t care about the country or the customers or the shareholders. They all play the game very hard and care only about winning. 

The rules are simple. You do whatever you can get away with.

This series may have been made 60 years ago but it is not the least bit dated. The game of power never changes.

The worlds of business, politics and the bureaucracy intersect constantly in this series, as they still do in real life six decades earlier. The media and the security services get involved in these power games as well, as they always do. In this series all politicians, from both parties, combine breathtaking viciousness and cynicism with incompetence and cowardice.

Wilder’s personal life becomes a major focus in The Power Game. He is married to Pamela (Barbara Murray). They stay together because preserving the marriage is in both their interests. Pamela has always tolerated Wilder’s extra-marital flings. Until now.

This latest fling began as a purely cynical move on Wilder’s part. Susan Weldon (Rosemary Leach) is a young but fairly senior civil servant employed by the National Export Board. She has access to extremely useful information, information she is not permitted to reveal but if he can seduce her he will undoubtedly get access to that information. He assumed that she understood that this was just an affair, that there was no way he was going to divorce his wife. 

Wilder also assumed that he would not become emotionally involved. Both assumptions prove to be mistaken.

And now Pamela may be having an affair as well. It’s un unstable unpredictable situation.

In this world such personal dramas become inextricably entangled with the boardroom dramas.

It should be pointed out that Wilder is not a crooked businessman as such. His ethics are breathtakingly flexible and his methods are exceptionally ruthless but he sees actually breaking the law as a loser move that invariably leads to disaster. If you’re smart you stay within the law and that’s what he does although at times he sails very very close to the wind.

It should also be noted that Wilder is not a vulture capitalist. His intention is always to build successful profitable companies. He sees that as the most secure basis for power.

Wilder might be a bit of a rogue but it’s impossible not to feel considerable admiration. He is a doer. He has immense energy and determination and imagination. He is within his chosen sphere almost a genius. 

Sir John Wilder is a big man in world of little men, of grey men.

And he is a fighter. Whenever his enemies (and he has plenty of those) think they have him on the ropes they discover that that is when he is most dangerous.

The series boasts a superb cast. Peter Barkworth gives a nicely nuanced performance as Kenneth Bligh, a man slowly gaining in confidence and learning to enjoy the game of power. 

Jack Watling (who was also in The Plane Makers) is good as Wilder’s right-hand man Don Henderson.

Barbara Murray is excellent as Lady Wilder, a woman in some ways almost as cynical as her husband.

The supporting cast includes such luminaries as Philip Madoc, Alfred Burke and Ian Holm (as an incredibly slimy civil servant).

But this series is dominated by the extraordinary charismatic powerhouse performance of Patrick Wymark as John Wilder. He is an absolute joy to watch.

The Power Game is subtle intelligent television and it’s very highly recommended.

Network’s DVD release of all three seasons can still be found without too much trouble. The image and sound quality are both quite satisfactory.

I’ve also reviewed the early episodes of The Plane Makers as well as the second season and the third season. 

And if you love this type of 1960s British TV you’ll also enjoy Mogul, AKA The Troubleshooters (1965).

David McDaniel’s The Prisoner: Who is Number 2?

David McDaniel’s Who is Number 2? was the second of the original novels based on The Prisoner TV series.

Like the first novel, Thomas M. Disch’s The Prisoner, it appears to take place some time after the events of the TV series.

The hero wakes up as usual in his London flat. Through the window he can see his beloved Lotus Seven S2 parked in the street. It’s just a normal day. Then he steps outside the front door and finds himself back in The Village. His London flat has been recreated in The Village.

And he meets the latest Number Two. A rather amiable Number Two. And rather indulgent. Number Six discovers that his car has even been brought to The Village. The narrow roads of The Village are designed for the little electric carts that are used there and can’t accommodate a proper car. But Number Two has arranged to have a miniature racing circuit built in The Village. And when Number Six takes it upon himself to extend the circuit he encounters no opposition.

Being a professional spy Number Six tends to be a pretty suspicious sort of fellow. He’s even suspicious of the cat that has now adopted him. The cat could be working for Number Two. It appears to be a real cat but you can never be sure.

Needless to say Number Six immediately comes up with an ingenious escape plan, involving the car. It will require an immense amount of work and planning but Number Six enjoys that sort of thing.

Number Six has reached certain conclusions. He is obviously in no danger, being considered far too important to be killed or damaged in any way. It’s also clear that he is being indulged, that Number Two’s objective is to provide Number Six with sufficient entertainment and stimulation to possibly reconcile himself to remaining in The Village. Number Two my have other agendas of his own as well. You can never be sure.

One interesting aspect to this novel is that it suggests an extra layer of complexity to Number Six’s character. He was not merely a British spy. He was an assassin. And Number Two suspects that Number Six has quite a bit of unresolved guilt as a result.

This novel answers two of the questions that vex Prisoner fans so much. Most importantly it answers the question - is Number Six actually John Drake from Danger Man? Or at least it answers the question assuming that you regard this novel as part of the official canon of The Prisoner. And that depends very much on whether the novel was approved by Patrick McGoohan.

Any espionage story takes place in an atmosphere of deception and ambiguity. You cannot be sure of anyone’s loyalty. You have to assume that nothing is quite as it seems to be. This atmosphere was present to some degree in Danger Man, a series to which The Prisoner may or may not have been a sequel. The Prisoner however really ramps up the paranoia and the sense that nothing is even remotely what it seems to be. There is no way of knowing if anything at all in this series is reality in a straightforward way. You start to doubt whether anything is reality in any sense of the word.

And it’s the nature of a series such as this that even when the plot is resolved it just raises more questions and doubts. You might still be stuck in an endless loop of non-reality.

The authors of the first two Prisoner novels understood this and they weren’t trying to write conventional spy thrillers. They were trying to remain consistent with the slightly surreal and very enigmatic nature of the series. I think they both succeed pretty well. Disch is more ambitious and pushes the weirdness much further but McDaniel is very good at subtly getting across to the reader that Number Six understands that he cannot believe in anything at all.

Who is Number 2? is pretty entertaining. If you’re not familiar with the TV series you won’t have a clue what’s going on. But if you are a fan of the TV series it’s worth reading and it’s recommended.

David McDaniel also wrote Man from U.N.C.L.E. original novels including The Dagger Affair which is rather good.

I’ve also reviewed the first of The Prisoner novels, Thomas M. Disch’s The Prisoner (later reissued as I Am Not a Number!). And I’ve reviewed The Prisoner (1967-68) TV series. And the Danger Man series.

Anyone who is a fan of The Prisoner must of course watch the brilliant Danger Man episode Colony Three.

The Dain Curse (1978 TV mini-series)

The Dain Curse is a U.S. television mini-series which originally screened on CBS in 1978. It comprises three feature-length episodes. James Coburn stars as private detective Hamilton Nash.

It is based on Dashiell Hammett’s second published novel, The Dain Curse. The novel was published in book form in 1929 but had been serialised in the Black Mask pulp magazine in 1928.

The TV retains the time setting of the novel and that is important. These events take place in 1928, before the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. This is a Jazz Age story, not a Depression-era story.

The hero of the novel is known only as the Continental Op. He figures in two of Hammett’s novels and many of his short stories. In the TV mini-series he is given the name Hamilton Nash (and is played by James Coburn).

It’s worth pointing out that there’s a good reason that Hammett’s private eye stories have an air of authenticity. Hammett spent seven years as a private detective, working for the world’s most famous detective agency, the Pinkerton Detective Agency. That’s also why the hero of The Dain Curse is not a Philip Marlowe-style down-at-heel PI working alone out of a seedy office. Nash works for a very big agency and judging by his fancy clothes he is very well paid. It’s also why he works as part of a team of operatives.

If you’re not familiar with the novel you might think that they’ve added a lot of 70s elements such as dope addiction and the crazy religious cult, but that stuff is all in the novel. It’s easy to forget that drugs were a big thing in the 1920s and that wacky religious cults had been around since the late 19th century. And phoney mystics fleecing foolish rich people were a huge thing in the 1920s.

It starts as an insurance investigation. There was a burglary of some diamonds but the stones were small and of very poor quality and hardly worth stealing. The burglary occurred at the Leggett house. The daughter, Gabrielle (Nancy Addison), seems rather strange. The whole household is strange. Nash doesn’t think there was any burglary.

Then comes the first murder and the plot is soon getting quite complicated. The Leggetts all have odd mysterious murky pasts and the past is more important to them than the present. There are secrets. Big secrets.

Nash solves the case to everyone’s satisfaction but his own. He knows that the solution doesn’t add up. This is the sort of thing that really bothers him.

At which point we need to talk about Hamilton Nash because he is not your stock-standard PI. He works for a big agency jealous of its reputation for honesty and integrity and that suits Nash because he has ethics. He also has professional pride. He believes in doing his job properly and thoroughly.

He’s not surprised to discover that this case has in fact only just begun.

There’s a connection to an obviously phoney religious cult run by the mysterious slightly sinister Aaronia Haldorn (Jean Simmons) and her husband Joseph. Joseph doesn’t just claim to be God. He believes he is God.

Nash gets some advice from his old friend Owen Fitzstephan (Jason Miller), a colourful author of occult potboilers.

There are romantic triangles and romantic quadrangles, lots of betrayals and of course everyone is telling lies.

Money is a motivation for some of the players in this complicated but jealousy, lust and an obsessive desire to preserve secrets are bigger motivations.

Nash is in danger of getting emotionally entangled with Gabrielle which, given her morphine addiction and general craziness, may not be a good idea.

And then there’s the Dain Curse. A family curse going back centuries. Gabrielle has Dain blood.

And this is just the first episode! There are two more to come. With countless plot twists.

James Coburn’s star quality is clearly in evidence but he’s called upon to do some real acting here and acquits himself well. He bears little resemblance to Hammett’s Continental Op and it’s best to think of Hamilton Nash as essentially a new character devised for the TV production. What matters is that Coburn has plenty of charm and he doesn’t play Nash as a straightforward tough guy.

Nancy Addison does a fine job as Gabrielle. It’s a tricky part. We have to be sympathetic to her even though she’s exasperating and she has to keep us guessing as to how far Gabrielle can be trusted.

This was an expensive and lavish production and it looks terrific. The makers wanted a cinematic look and had major battles with the network over the issue but for the most part they got their way. It does look a lot more cinematic than typical American television productions of that era.

The problems with this mini-series are actually inherent in the source material. The novel was in fact four short stories cobbled together so it’s very episodic. 

The mini-series is therefore also very episodic. There’s no one clear central plot strand and overall there’s a bit too much plot.

Fortunately there’s enough wild stuff to keep things interesting and I enjoyed The Dain Curse a good deal. Highly recommended.

The Image Entertainment DVD release is still fairly easy to get hold of and don’t be put off by the fact that it’s DVD. It really looks very very nice. 

Most importantly the three episodes are complete and uncut (there was a heavily butchered version floating around at one time).

Firefly (2002-2003)

Time to revisit Joss Whedon’s ill-fated science fiction 2002-2003 TV series Firefly. I disliked it at the time but perhaps I’ve mellowed since then. It is possible that at the time was suffering from Joss Whedon Fatigue.

At that stage Whedon’s fans thought he could walk on water and perhaps he was starting to believe that himself. He was apparently thinking in terms of a show running for seven seasons, which was certainly wildly optimistic. It was cancelled midway through the first season. It was his first taste of failure.

To be fair it was not entirely his fault. The network was unhappy with the series right from the start. They helped to ensure its failure, starting by screening the episodes out of order. Disastrously, they screened the first episode midway through the show’s run. That episode gives us crucial backstory on the main character and crucial background information. As a result viewers had no clue what was going on.

The basic premise is breathtakingly unoriginal - an ill-assorted band of misfits adventuring through outer space. This is the exact same premise as Blake’s 7, Farscape, Lexx, Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star. By 2002 it was the most over-used cliché in science fiction.

Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) is the captain of the Serenity, a battered Firefly-class cargo spaceship. He and his crew are smugglers, thieves and all-round criminals and they’re notably unsuccessful. The crew also includes Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin), a high-priced whore. More on her later. They have taken on a few passengers. One of them is a preacher man. There’s also a young doctor and his insane sister River (Summer Glau). The Alliance government has done something nasty to her brain. 

The Alliance are the bad guys. Mal supported the Independents in their war against the Alliance. The Independents lost and this left Mal bitter and twisted.

We have nine ill-assorted people who don’t necessarily understand or trust each other and some of them are not what they appear to be. And romantic and sexual attractions start to happen. There’s potential for interesting character developments and relationships.

So what went wrong? The answer is, almost everything. The hints that there is going to be interesting character and relationship stuff and that there is something really bizarre about River don’t really kick in until we’re well into the series and by that time most viewers had switched off. Realistically you have to grab the audience in the first three episodes or so and Firefly fails to do this, for reasons I’m about to explain.

We expect the crew of the Serenity to encounter new and different strange worlds in each episode but every planet has normal Earth gravity and normal Earth atmosphere and normal Earth vegetation. In fact every planet looks just like California, in the days of the Old West. Every planet has a Wild West town. It’s too much of the same thing each week. Even when they visit a more urbanised world it looks like the 19th century. Firefly’s aesthetic is just awful. It’s boring.

Whedon was hoping that it would be original and exciting to make it a western set in space. The blending of space opera and Wild West elements is always very uneasy. How do we know this is a western? There are guys on horses, with six-guns. There are saloon brawls. There are cattle rustlers! The dining table in the mess hall is straight out of Little House on the Prairie. The captain of the ship looks like a poor but honest rancher in the Old West. His second-in-command looks like a lady gunslinger. The spaceship, the Serenity, is basically a stagecoach in space.

I can understand Whedon’s thinking. He wanted to avoid science fiction clichés. He wanted to avoid a futuristic aesthetic because such things always date very badly. He wanted it to look as unlike Star Trek as possible. He succeeded in this. This is the anti-Star Trek. This is Star Trek if the Federation were the bad guys. This is the anti-Star Trek. I’m OK with that as a concept but it just doesn’t come off. He needed to create an aesthetic that was different and exciting, but it’s dull.

And in an effort to avoid science fiction clichés he ended up with a series that lacks any real science fiction feel. Too many of the plotlines seem like they belong in 50s B-westerns, with B-western villains. Apart from the spaceships there is no cool technology at all.

These mistakes undoubtedly alienated the target audience - science fiction fans. 

Perhaps Whedon, whose previous TV successes Buffy and Angel had been aimed primarily at a female audience, failed to understand that a science fiction series was going to have to aim much more at a male audience. Offering hints of complex character and relationship stuff is all very well but a male sci-fi audience is going to want more actual actual sci-fi and more cool tech stuff.

A major problem is that Whedon wanted Mal Reynolds to be dark and brooding and cynical, a character we would slowly come to understand and admire. The network vetoed that. He had to be a conventional hero from the start so he is turned into a bleeding heart tough guy with a heart of gold and it makes him boring. Nathan Fillion is OK but the series needed more acting charisma and more colourful characters.

Inara is potentially interesting. She insists that she’s a Companion, not a mere whore. And in this future being a Companion is a respectable high-status profession. They have a union and everything. There’s also a suggestion that there’s a quasi-religious element - that it’s a bit like the temple prostitution or sacred prostitution that (possibly) existed in the ancient world. It’s an intriguing idea which presumably Whedon intended to develop but I’m inclined to agree with Mal Reynolds - he regards Inara as just a high-class hooker. But at the same time he’s very attracted to her.

Whedon learned some hard lessons from Firefly and in his next foray in TV sci-fi, Dollhouse, he did not make the same mistakes. Dollhouse has a much cooler premise which grabs our interest right from the start. It has a cooler and more consistent aesthetic. It feels like a genuine science fiction series. It has colourful but ambiguous characters. And in Eliza Dushku it has a very charismatic lead actress.

I’m afraid that on a rewatch Firefly still doesn’t grab me.

Black Lagoon (2006)

Black Lagoon is a 2006 action-adventure anime TV series. While it was made in 2006 the setting seems to be a bit earlier, maybe the early 1990s.

Rokuro Okajima is a young Japanese salaryman. At times he feels vaguely dissatisfied but there’s nothing he can do about it. He’ll rise slowly through the ranks and become a middle-aged salaryman, probably with a wife and kids. He’s resigned to living a boring life.

Until he gets captured by pirates.

He was on an assignment for his company. Very low-level courier stuff. A computer disk to be delivered to a client. He has no idea what is on the disk. He certainly didn’t expect an organised crime syndicate to hire pirates to steal the disk.

Now the pirates have the disk, and they have Rokuro. They figure on making some extra cash by holding him for ransom. That plan doesn’t work out and now the pirates have a whole army of mercenaries after them, and Rokuro is of no further use to them. The obvious step would be to kill him but they don’t do that for two reasons. Firstly, they’re pirates, not cold-blooded murderers. They’ll kill people in battle, but not a helpless unarmed civilian. The second reason is that killing Rokuro would be like killing a friendly well-meaning puppy. So they’re stuck with him.

The pirates are a black American ex-US Navy dude named Dutch, an American  computer guy named Benny, and Revy. Revy is young, female, crazy, wild and deadly. And sexy. She provides the combat arm of the team. 

And now Rokuro Okajima is part of the team, and he’s become known as Rock.

The pirates have a ex-US Navy PT boat called Black Lagoon. They are based in Roanapur, a fictional South-East Asian city which is a haven for gangsters, smugglers, thieves and pirates.

The Black Lagoon pirates undertake jobs for various client, notably Balalaika. She’s a big-time Russian gangster. She’s head of the Hotel Moscow organised crime syndicate. As gangsters go she’s fairly honourable. That cannot be said of some of the pirates’ clients.

There are no yakuza in this saga but the Hotel Moscow group do resemble yakuza in some ways. Like yakuza they think of themselves as adhering to a warrior code, a code of honour. They’re all ex-military and Afghanistan War veterans. They’re adrift in the post-Soviet world. They’re a bit like yakuza in postwar Japan, clinging to a warrior code in order to give their lives meaning. Balalaika thinks of herself as a soldier. In her own way she is a woman of honour.

Black Lagoon also has links with the nuns of the Ripoff Church. They’re not your run-of-the-mill nuns, being essentially gun-toting gangsters. Sister Eda and Revy have always been rivals for the title of the most formidable dangerous psycho bitch in Roanapur.

By episode three we’re into the saga of the attempted salvage of a German U-boat wreck. There’s something valuable on board but it’s not gold. And others are interested in the wreck. Lots of mayhem ensues.

Later the pirates are taking a cargo to Roanapu, a kidnapped South American boy. The boy is confident that the family’s maid Roberta will rescue him. Roberta is a sweet lady who always carries an umbrella. She’s a bit like Mary Poppins, if you can imagine Mary Poppins as an unstoppable killing machine.

Later the Black Lagoon team encounters the twins. A cute brother and sister, from Transylvania. There are lots of horror references including some very obvious references to Kubrick’s The Shining.

Like most good anime TV series Black Lagoon gradually becomes more and more interesting and more and more morally complex. When it comes to loyalties and motivations there are wheels within wheels. There are many different criminal factions and many shifting alliances.

And there’s the question of belonging and of in-group loyalty. To what extent is Rock really part of the Black Lagoon group? Is he prepared to commit himself fully? 

The relationship between Revy and Rock is interesting because you expect some kind of romantic or sexual attraction to develop. That’s not quite the case but an odd kind of emotional bond does develop.

Black Lagoon is an action-packed, fast-moving exciting and stylish series. Highly recommended.

It's available on Blu-Ray.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson - The Treasures of Agra (1983)

Between 1979 and 1986 a series of Sherlock Holmes TV-movies were made for Soviet television. They were hugely popular in Russia (they triggered a real Holmes craze there) and well received internationally. Vasily Livanov starred as as Sherlock Holmes with Vitaly Solomin as Dr Watson.

The 1983 two-part fourth film, The Treasures of Agra (Sokrovishcha Agry), adapted both the 1890 novel The Sign of Four and the 1891 short story A Scandal in Bohemia (which is included as a flashback subplot).

Holmes has a new client, a rather sweet young woman, Miss Morstan. Her father had disappeared in India a decade earlier. Every year she receives, from an unknown source, a small package containing a very valuable pearl. Now she has received a letter promising information about her father if she agrees to a meeting.

It transpires that her father and a Major Sholto found a treasure hoard. There were perhaps others involved, and it seems there was double-crossing. And someone wants to make amends to Miss Morstan. She wants Holmes and Watson to accompany her to the meeting.

The meeting takes place, but a murder takes place as well.

The clues are puzzling, including an odd footprint.

Holmes will of course have to make use of his mastery of disguise.

There’s a man with a wooden leg, there are twin brothers, Inspector Lestrade turns up and arrests everybody in sight (everybody except the guilty parties) and there’s a very cool steam launch chase on the river.

There are revelations about the very murky events that took place years earlier, events which left a legacy of bitterness and guilt.

And Dr Watson is starting to become emotionally entangled with the charming and beautiful Miss Morstan.

In the second part we get the story of Holmes involvement with the glamorous sexy enigmatic Irene Adler and her apparent attempts to blackmail a minor European princeling. Many men have fallen for Irene Adler and Holmes is disturbed to discover that he is not immune to her considerable charms. Both Holmes and Watson display hidden romantic sides to their natures.

While Jeremy Brett’s twitchy neurotic performance in the British TV series is undeniably fascinating it is rather eccentric and many viewers will prefer Vasily Livanov’s more straightforward interpretation of the role. Vitaly Solomin as Dr Watson is a fine Dr Watson, not in the least foolish.

These Soviet TV-movies were clearly made by people with a great deal of respect for the source material, and also for the viewer.

When you look at the sets and costumes and the fine location shooting it’s obvious that real money was spent on this production. It’s very polished. It captures the feel of Conan Doyle’s stories and of Conan Doyle’s version of late Victorian London.

There is fog of course, but used to serve a purpose.  

The supporting cast is excellent. I loved Borislav Brondukov’s lively performance as Inspector Lestrade. This is a Lestrade who is not a fool, just ridiculously over-keen. He makes his arrests before thinking things through, but when he does think them through he is capable of admitting his mistakes.

Larisa Solovyova is a very glamorous Irene Adler. One can understand why Holmes becomes obsessed by her. 

Viktor Proskurin is very good as the rather jumpy Thaddeus Sholto.

The Russian DVD set includes all five movies with English subtitles.

Thoroughly enjoyable. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the first two TV films, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and The Hound of the Baskervilles. 

And I’ve reviewed Conan Doyle’s novel The Sign of Four.